Just because nobody really understands what that means.
I am no longer using Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Whatsapp or Facebook messenger.
In case you missed it last month.
Meta is making sweeping changes to its content moderation policies, including abandoning third-party fact-checks in favor of X’s crowd-sourced “Community Notes” approach and loosening restrictions on topics like immigration and gender identity. Under the updated Hateful Conduct policy, for example, calling gay and trans people “mentally ill” is now allowed, while an explicit ban on referring to women as “household objects” has been removed.
So, that’s pretty neat. No, actually, it’s really fucking gross. I have a lot of friends that this could potentially affect, so let’s call that reason number one as to why I’m not using it.
Moving on to reason #2, Facebook has been broken for me for about 10 years. I log in, I see the same dozen people whether I want to or not. I have muted them all, and when I do that, I see ads and a lot of error messages. Not only that, but Facebook is very well known to favor content that gets people mad. Most of it is fake news/propaganda generated by the Maga propaganda machine these days I’d wager. Or Russia.
And, for good ol’ number three, let’s hear from [Ev Williams]:(https://ev.medium.com/making-social-social-again-0126fa5c6ce8)
Social networks became “social media,” which, at first, meant receiving content from people you chose to hear from. But in the quest to maximize engagement, the timeline of friends and people you picked to follow turned into a free-for-all battle for attention. And it turns out, for most people, your friends aren’t as entertaining as (god forbid) influencers who spend their waking hours making “content.”
In other words, social media became…media.
It’s the last sentence there. Those sites aren’t social. The main objective of these sites now is to keep you there to drive ad views. Also, since you are going everywhere with your phone, and those apps installed on your phone, you are talking Meta with you. Everywhere. We all can laugh about the talking to your phone to get the correct ad, but that is also pretty fucking gross.
I have only deactivated my accounts for now, since I know I have to use Marketplace soon and I need to go back to Insta and look for Youtube channels and websites of my favorite creators so I can still enjoy them and support them, without doing it through any Meta properties. And I need to get to threads to see if anyone has made the switch to Bluesky, which I am “using” and by using I mean I have an account and I post to it, occasionally.
And let’s add Tick Tok to the list. I’ve never used, really. Not going to start now because everyone is talking about it.
That means I’m also working on sending everyone back to me here, which I’ll have to do an advertising blitz when I activate everything to maybe share a link to this post? I have some more stuff happening here that I am very excited to keep playing with and making better, and that all revolves around federation. Oh no! new word for the blog. Yea, there will be more of that.
